The Argentine Surplus

Javier Milei assumed office in December and immediately sliced and diced the government.  As promised in his campaign, he took a chainsaw to the government budget and reduced costs.  Only three months later, Argentina is running a surplus!  Hey, let's try that here!  Government spends too much and does too much.  Just as Lewis and Clark blazed a trail westward that others soon followed, Milei has carved out a path to smaller government.  Let's follow that trail!

The government that governs least governs best.

Thomas Jefferson

The Scalphunters (1968)

Joe Bass (Burt Lancaster) has just spent the winter collecting pelts when he is surrounded by Kiowa warriors.  Two Crows, the leader, wants the pelts and is willing to trade a black man for them.  Joe has no interest in an escaped slave but the deal is forced on him.  Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis) was a house slave in Louisianna and happens to be surprisingly well-educated.  Though Joseph explains how he was recently captured from the Comanche and would like to be returned to the Comanche, Joe Bass decides he would be worth more if sold back into slavery.  Futhermore, Joe explains how there is a jug of whiskey hidden inside the pelts and he expects the Kiowa will be dead drunk this evening.  It will be the perfect time to sneak into camp and abscond with his pelts.  They have hardly arrived to surveil the Kiowa campsite when scalp hunters led by Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) slaughter them.  The scalphunters ride off with the pelts!  While Joseph thinks that's the end of that, Joe is still determined to get his pelts.

The scalphunters have several wagons, several women, and about a dozen men.  Jed (Dabney Coleman) is Jim's righthand while Kate (Shelly Winters) is the woman he tries to please.  Kate is not easily pleased.  She makes demands of Jim that he usually obeys.  Maybe she's Jim's righthand?

Mostly, this is Joseph Lee's story.  He starts off as property of the Kiowa, finds himself traded to Joe Bass, and later falls into the hands of Jim Howie and his band of scalphunters.  Though everyone wants to sell him as a slave (he's worth $1000 to $1500!), he is determined to get to Mexico where slavery is illegal.  He has a real talent for manipulating people.

Strange to say, this movie about men who scalp Indians was often comedic.  The interactions between Joe Bass and Joseph Lee are funny and sometimes slapstick.  Then, in the next scene, someone is run through with a spear.  That switch is often jarring.  The comedy is a little too heavy at parts.  Joe Bass, who is cunning through much of the movie, suddenly turns doltish as the plot requires.

The time period of the movie is inscrutable.  Most of the guns are post-Civil War weapons.  However, it is clearly during or before the Civil War since slavery is still legal.  The heyday of the mountain man hunting pelts was from 1820 to 1840.  Yes, many continued for years after but the fur market had crashed with a change in fashion.  The most infamous of the scalp hunters were John Joel Glanton (1819 - 1850) and James Kirker (1793-1852).  Each had crews of men with whom they slaughtered Indians or anyone whose scalp might pass as Indian.  They would collect the bounty from Mexico, who could not post enough soldiers to protect the northern frontier from Indian depredations.

Ahistorical in its setting, it is still good popcorn fun.

The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)

Paul Hogan returns in this quirky comedy based on his life after Crocodile Dundee.  While his manager, Angie (Rachael Carpani), tries to get him a new movie deal and arrange his imminent knighthood, Paul's life spins out of control through a series of unfortunate events.  First, he defended himself from a snake by batting it away... into the face of a 5th grade teacher!  Oops.  Next, he doesn't like the movie pitch where Will Smith is his son... because he's black.  Did they not see the previous Dundee movies?  Of course, that's not how the press reports it.  When he finds himself in a car chase from the police through the street of LA, it has really gotten out of hand.  If it can go wrong, it does.

Though there is the overall arc of Paul's public life becoming a nightmare, he rolls with the punches and isn't much concerned by it.  Some of the comedy bits have nothing to do with the life-in-ruins arc, just random sketch comedy.  Wayne Knight as a bad house guest, failed paparazzi loitering at his house, and so forth.  I'm generally baffled why his 'son' had such a large part in the movie since he really didn't add anything.  Wow, you've got a multi-talented son who has an active social life.  This is light and fun, an entertaining diversion with a wide-variety of cameos.  John Cleese is the standout as an Uber driver, but there is also Olivia Newton-John, Reginald VelJohnson, and Oscar-winner Chevy Chase.

Some of the best comedy had nothing to do with the storyline.  At one point, the producers suggested a new Crocodile Dundee film where his wife has been killed and he's out for vengeance with a sexy park ranger!  Rachel McAdams is suggested.  Paul shakes his head.  "I'm 80!  She's like 30."

"Right!  She's too old!  Who was in High School Musical that we can cast?"  Funny!

A large chunk of the movie is Paul watching how the news reports his misadventures.  There's texting and facetime, news programs and red-carpet interviews.  Life as a celebrity is a PR campaign.

Fun and nostalgic.  Recommended.

Primaries Over

Though it is unclear as of this writing if Nikki Haley will end her campaign for president, it is clear that she has no traction.  Her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor for 6 years, has chosen Donald Trump by a 60-40 margin in today's primary.  If you cannot carry your home state, what chance is there anywhere else?  Trump is 5-0 in the contests so far.

On the Democratic side, Joe Biden is 3-0 vs. the only remaining opponent, Dean Phillips.  As only two states have awarded delegates for the Democrats so far, I won't call this one over yet but Phillips better have a good showing in the next 2 outings or he's also done.

RFK Jr. withdrew from the Democratic nomination even before voting began and is now running an independent campaign.  Independent candidacies rarely achieve anything.  Without a party to do ground work, he'll needed to create his own party apparatus to get the vote out.  Unlikely to achieve even the impact of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party.

It does look like we are headed for a rematch from 2020.  Both candidates now have presidential records that can be compared.  Which one looks better?  Does it matter?  Of course, a lot can happen in the next 8 1/2 months.

Hunted Like a Wolf

In this brief book, Marvin Meltzer describes how the Seminoles came to live in Florida, their lifestyle, and how they soon became an obstacle to white expansion into the state.  The book mostly details the Second Seminole War, which started at the end of 1835 and didn't conclude until August 1842.  After a series of clashes between Seminole Indians and whites, the US government foisted treaties on the Seminoles.  The Seminoles were mostly helpless observers where these treaties were concerned.  One of the big issues with the Seminoles was that they had become a haven for runaway slaves.  That nearly half of Seminole warriors were escaped slaves or free blacks was a closely guarded secret.  The war might look too much like a slave revolt than just another Indian war.  By 1835, Florida was a powder keg.  President Jackson had already arranged for moving the various tribes from the east and into Oklahoma.  The Seminole proved the most intransigent and attacked US forces in December 1835.  Francis Dade and his column of around 100 soldiers were almost complete wiped out; only one survivor to tell the tale.  The Seminole War was on!

President Jackson dispatched General Winfield Scott to bring the Seminoles to heel.  His plan for converging columns didn't work well in the trackless swamps of Florida.  He was soon replaced by General Call, the territorial governor.  His efforts proved no more effective than Scott's.  General Thomas Jesup was given the command and admitted it was tougher than he expected.  He resorted to treachery, asking chiefs to come discuss peace only to then toss these very chiefs into prison.  Osceola, one of the most effective Seminole leaders, was captured this way and died a few months later in a military prison.  Zachary Taylor was the next to take command and he fought the largest engagement of the war, the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.  However, Taylor was just as unable to tame the Seminole as his predecessors.  Next, General Armistead took his turn, providing the same mediocre results.  Colonel William Jenkins Worth was given the command and made it a policy to always be pursing the Seminoles.  Where other generals had taken the summers off, Worth kept the men in the field.  Though he had some success and managed to nab the last of the notable leaders, there were still Seminoles hiding in the Everglades.  Worth suggested leaving them there, which is what several of his predecessors had also advised.  President Tyler, the 4th president to preside over the war, agreed.

Drawing heavily on John Mahon's account of the war, this is a shorter treatment.  The tone is very harsh toward the Americans, which may be entirely justified.  Clearly, the Americans displaced the Seminoles from lands they had long inhabited and offered comparatively little compensation and bad justification.  Of course, 19th century attitudes were very different from 20th century attitudes.  Every culture took advantage of the weaker cultures.  Such goes back millennia.

Just okay.  Even so, I recommend reading Mahon's History of the Second Seminole War instead.

The Sea Wolves (1980)

In the Indian Ocean during World War II, the Germans are sinking British ships with astonishing regularity.  It is as if the Germans know when and where to find the ships.  It is suspected that the Germans have a spy in the Portuguese port of Goa on the west coast of India.  Indeed, three German ships are anchored in the harbor but the Portuguese - who are neutral in the war - have removed the radios.  Colonel Lewis Pugh (Gregory Peck) and Captain Gavin Stewart (Roger Moore) travel to Goa to investigate.  While there, attempts are made on their lives and they conclude that a secret radio is on one of the German ships.  Again, as this is a neutral port, British commandos can't just attack.  Instead, Colonel Pugh calls upon the Calcutta Light Horse, a group of retired soldiers who are eager to help the war effort.  Colonel William "Bill" Grice (David Niven) is their commanding officer.  They plan to sail a junker of an Indian riverboat into Goa harbor and assault the German ships by surprise.  Major Crossley (Patrick Macnee) is an explosives expert who will make sure all the German ships are sunk.  Can a bunch of middle-aged and out of shape former soldiers pull off a daring assault?

While Colonel Pugh leads the assault, Captain Stewart and Jack Cartwright (Trevor Howard) plan a variety of distractions for the night of the raid: a high-end party, a fireworks show, and free brothels paid by an eccentric German philanthropist!  Not one to be all business, James Bond... er... Gavin Stewart finds time to romance Mrs. Cromwell (Barbara Kellerman).  Of course, he does not realize that she is a German spy who is having a hard time deciding if she should kill him or not.  Gee, that doesn't sound like a retread of The Spy Who Loved Me.

Made by the same team that produced The Wild Geese, the original casting had hoped to include Richard Burton and Richard Harris as Pugh and Grice.  The movie does have a Wild Geese feel to it with a batch of older men playing soldier in this off-the-books raid.  The movie delivers what it promises, a commando raid by retirees, but it fails to have memorable characters or particularly good action scenes.  The most interesting characters were James Bond... er... Gavin Stewart and Jack Cartwright.  Trevor Howard, who is usually the commander in such films, is here a retiree desperate for action and willing to take any role.  He can be cantankerous, funny, and oddly charming.  Something of a departure for him, at least of the roles I've seen of his.

This is based on a true story and the historical photos of Pugh, Stewart, and Grice are shown in the credits.  Even so, it is just okay.

The Dain Curse (1978)

Hamilton "Ham" Nash (James Coburn) is a private investigator working for an agency.  The "Old man" who runs the agency sends him to investigate a diamond heist.  Nothing seems to add up.  One diamond was on the stoop, apparently dropped by the thief.  The rest of the diamonds were tiny and hardly worth stealing.  Looking around the house, the thief would have to ignore far more valuable stuff to take the diamonds.  Nash has an odd encounter with the daughter, Gabrielle, who claims to be suffering the Dain Curse.  Nash has hardly begun the investigation when the diamonds are recovered, and the thief is found dead.  Nash realizes there is more to this heist than meets the eye.

This made for TV miniseries is a convoluted mess that takes several short stories and stiches them into a single meandering narrative.  The 3-hour version is incomplete, having sliced out large chunks from the full miniseries.  At the end of one scene, Gabrielle is holding a bloody knife and confessing to a murder while her fiancé and Nash stand nearby.  Then, practically the next scene, there is a discussion of her husband's murder and her kidnapping.  Huh?  When did he get killed?  When was the wedding?  What kidnapping?!  There are several times that Nash or someone else refers to an event or conversation that was not shown.  Who edited this cut?  Entirely too much time is dedicated to Nash's efforts to cure Gabrielle of morphine addiction.

Nash is a keen investigator and seldom misses clues.  However, I had picked out the main villain fairly early and was a bit disappointed that it took Nash so much longer.  Coburn is good in the role and may even be terrific in the full cut, but the Amazon cut is confusing and incomplete.

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